World News - Doctors Struggle to Save Wounded Marine On Desert Battleground of Western Iraq, Military Doctors Fight to Save Gravely Wounded Marine

The chaplain assigned to the medical camp was drafting a homily. The heart surgeon was using the quiet spell to edit a medical paper. The medics chatted over lunch. Twenty miles away, on the desert plain outside Fallujah, an insurgent's bullet tore through the body of a young Marine. Less than a half-hour later, Camp Taqqadum Surgical's men and women were waiting as a roaring helicopter landed at their patch of sand-colored tents. And so began an urgent, hour-long effort to save the life of Lance Cpl. James W. Higgins, 22, of Thurmont, Md. For the 75 Navy doctors and medics here, it was in many ways just a normal case one of the roughly 100 seriously wounded Marines and Iraqi soldiers and civilians they see each month from this section of violent Anbar province. They stabilize the wounded, who then are taken to larger U.S. military hospitals. ... http://abcnews.go.com

The sober tone adopted recently by some top generals talking Iraq has raised eyebrows in Washington.Army Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, the spokesman for the Multi-National Force-Iraq, made headlines in mid-October when he remarked that the increased violence in Baghdad over the previous several weeks was "disheartening."Military and congressional sources say the frank tone reflects frustration among military leaders at the unexpectedly violent sectarian fighting in Iraq and ultimately concern about who will be held responsible in the public eye if the campaign there fails.Caldwell noted that despite efforts by U.S. and Iraqi forces to reduce the sectarian warfare raging in Baghdad — an operation dubbed "Together Forward" — there had been a 22% increase in attacks in recent weeks....http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-10-28-generals-iraq_x.htm?csp=34

The Army arraigned a 101st Airborne Division soldier Fri who was charged with raping & killing a 14-year-old Iraqi girl & killing 3 others in her family. Pfc. Bryan L. Howard is accused of plotting in March to rape & kill the teenager in Mahmoudiya, a village about 20 miles south of Baghdad. Three other soldiers and a former Army private from the division's 502nd Infantry Regiment also face charges related to the attack. Howard deferred entering a plea or scheduling a court-martial during the proceedings at Fort Campbell. Both his attorney, Cpt. Ryan Rosauer, & his father Lynn Howard in the audience, declined to speak to reporters. Two other soldiers accused of rape & murder with him in the attack — Sgt. Paul E. Cortez & Pfc. Jesse V. Spielman — could be given the death sentence if they are convicted, a military judge ruled earlier this month. Both will be arraigned soon, the military said. And the leaders who lied us into this war are not charged, but the little guys are?...http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/10/28/iraq/main2135258.shtml?source=RSSattr=U.S._2135258

Washington Department of Corrections administrators ordered the release of state Sen. Pam Roach's son, who was in prison on drug-trafficking charges, more than 100 days early -- despite warnings from community corrections officers that such a move would violate agency policy. Two street-level officers assigned to the case raised serious concerns -- verbally and in writing -- weeks before Stephen Roach, 26, was freed May 1. They argued that the inmate had been misclassified as having a lower risk of reoffending because a prior assault hadn't been taken into account. Roach was released anyway, and some of the officers' written complaints were deleted from the department's official record of the case, according to interviews and records obtained by the Seattle P-I....http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/290340_roach28.html

Staying in Iraq not an option. Many Americans who were among the most eager to invade Iraq now urge that we find a way out. These Americans include not only civilian ``strategists'' and other ``hawks'' but also senior military commanders and, perhaps most fervently, combat soldiers. Even some of those Iraqis regarded by our senior officials as the most pro-American are determined now to see American military personnel leave their country. Polls show that as few as 2 percent of Iraqis consider Americans to be liberators. This is the reality of the situation in Iraq. We must acknowledge the Iraqis' right to ask us to leave, and we should set a firm date by which to do so. We suggest that phased withdrawal should begin on or before December 31, 2006, with the promise to make every effort to complete it by June 30, 2007. Withdrawal is not only a political imperative but a strategic requirement. ...http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15430.htm

Did Israel use a secret new uranium-based weapon in southern Lebanon this summer in the 34-day assault that cost more than 1,300 Lebanese lives, most of them civilians? We know that the Israelis used American "bunker-buster" bombs on Hizbollah's Beirut headquarters. We know that they drenched southern Lebanon with cluster bombs in the last 72 hours of the war, leaving tens of thousands of bomblets which are still killing Lebanese civilians every week. And we now know - after it first categorically denied using such munitions - that the Israeli army also used phosphorous bombs, weapons which are supposed to be restricted under the third protocol of the Geneva Conventions, which neither Israel nor the United States have signed....http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15432.htm